If you don’t look at the release date – May 17, 2024 – you could almost think you’ve bought a vintage stock copy of a Scandinavian second-wave black metal classic from the mid to late nineties. The brand new – and final – single from NECHT’s album The Prophecy of Karnifor perfectly reinforces this impression in every respect.
And yet with Stirred By Shadow, I Did Wake, things are somehow different, as between the three rather idiosyncratic pillars of anthem, frenzy and ritualistic mantra, Canada’s NECHT have created a quite serious temple that fulfills an admirable and rare purpose: to enable transformation. And no, this does not imply self-transcendence within the framework of a cult, including the one presented here. Instead, it’s actually all about feeding the often tragic stories from the outside world into a self-contained narrative universe of their own. NECHT see storytelling – well beyond religion and the fetish of the bygone, as seems all too native to black metal – as the most salutary way to digest the emotional excess and the manifold sensations of a world that is all too expansive for the single mind.
NECHT approach this undertaking with pragmatic efficiency: They play through everything on the basis of the idea of a lost, quasi prehistoric civilization and work their way through it. If you get involved, you will encounter influences from Greek mythology as well as from other early advanced civilizations of mankind.
Using the methods of H.P. Lovecraft’s Weird Fiction, the band creates ancient writings as well as their discoverers, translators and resulting interpretive works. Ultimately, Zenith Maharg and his Ascendants consistently embody their own work in flesh and blood – and thus create a wonderfully rebellious black metal that makes you revel in its archaic grace, while respectfully thumbing its nose at the very scene it serves, but also at religious nutcases, warmongers and other excesses of humanity.
With the now available sermon Stirred By Shadow, I Did Wake, the band tells of the origin of the sun god B’Ahn, who opposes his mother, the all-devouring Karnifor, in order to ward off the apocalypse – behold:
“BRETHREN! Do not fear the shadow. Within the shadow there may be found despair. Within the shadow there may be found death, and dissolution. But within the shadow, there may also be found awakening and enlightenment. For it was in the shadow that our Father, B’ahn, was born. GLORY TO THE SUN!” -Zenith Maharg from the Temple of NECHT in the Cult of B’Ahn, citing the Enkari-B’Ahn writings
The story of NECHT began in the pandemic year 2022 with a Canadian black metal trio that grew into a quartet as it progressed. Now, in 2024, Zenith Maharg and his Ascendants Vlasfimos, Zhargor and Aemoh step out of the shadows of the past to spread the word of their soon-to-be-released long meditation The Prophecy of Karnifor. The weird cultists themselves give us a little insight into what has secretly happened at the advent of the Temple of NECHT: “Zenith Maharg and Ascendant Vlasfimos are long-standing collaborators, already dead-set on starting a black metal project. In a second-hand bookshop in Calgary, Zenith Maharg then came across a copy of the obscure and controversial history Translating the Enkari-B’ahn Scrolls: Words from the People of the End Times, written by Dr. Birgitta Olsson, based on the discoveries that the German explorer and philosopher Dr. Karl von Mecklenburg made in the middle of the 19th century, and published in 2015. As he read and learned more about the fascinating and largely unknown history of the Enkari, he became determined to establish the Temple that is NECHT to do homage to our most ancient ancestors. Since then, we have been performing public rituals with rapidly growing numbers of participants, in which – enlightened by our multifaceted sermons – more and more people have been joining the Cult of B’ahn, our sun god.”
One of the central themes in the history of the Enkari was the social division into two city-states, Lashmir and Ishpan, which were engaged in a perpetual war until the end of the records. B’ahn was the god of the city warriors of Lashmir, to whom NECHT also associate themselves. Now, for the first time, the descendants of the Lashmirs are performing selected sermons from the meditation The Prophecy of Karnifor, which will be made available in full on May 17th, 2024 – some of them as part of visual revelations, such as For Violence Was Wrought Upon Me, Into Bondage Born and Stirred By Shadow, I Did Wake.
Meditation through repetition: Put Stirred By Shadow, I Did Wake on your alt prehistorical playlist now as an offering to B’ahn: https://linktr.ee/nechtblackmetal
The full length meditation The Prophecy Of Karnifor will be revealed on May 17, 2024. Disciples of the cult and those willing to become one can pre-order it here at any given time: https://necht.bandcamp.com/album/the-prophecy-of-karnifor
Learn more about the temple of NECHT:
https://www.facebook.com/people/Necht/61550493020359/
https://www.youtube.com/@NechtBlackMetal
https://www.instagram.com/nechtblackmetal/
https://soundcloud.com/user-227088367
https://necht.bandcamp.com/album/the-prophecy-of-karnifor
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5Wb4y2UcuDY48xH8ftksFu
Click image to watch the video
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